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Divers retrieved one black box and located the other underwater Monday from the AirAsia plane that crashed more than two weeks ago, a key development that will help investigators unravel what caused the aircraft to plummet into the Java Sea less than halfway into its flight.

The cockpit voice recorder was found just hours after officials announced the data flight recorder had been pulled from beneath a piece of the aircraft's wing and brought to the surface, said Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, operation coordinator at the national search and rescue agency. However, he said it remained lodged beneath heavy wreckage, and divers were struggling to free it at a depth of 105 feet.

The two data records are vital to understanding what brought Flight QZ8501 down on Dec. 28, killing all 162 people on board. They provide essential information including the plane's vertical and horizontal speeds along with engine temperature and final conversations between the captain and co-pilot.

Once the second device is recovered, both boxes will be taken to Jakarta for analysis. It could take up to two weeks to download their information, said Nurcahyo Utomo, an investigator at Indonesia’s National Committee for Safety Transportation.